We left the beach, and our ways diverged. We exchanged goodnight,
and had parted indeed, when he said, returning,
'Mr. Sampson, MAY I ask? Poor Meltham, whom we spoke of, - dead
yet?'
'Not when I last heard of him; but too broken a man to live long,
and hopelessly lost to his old calling.'
'Dear, dear, dear!' said he, with great feeling. 'Sad, sad, sad!
The world is a grave!' And so went his way.
It was not his fault if the world were not a grave; but I did not
call that observation after him, any more than I had mentioned
those other things just now enumerated. He went his way, and I
went mine with all expedition. This happened, as I have said,
either at the end of September or beginning of October. The next
time I saw him, and the last time, was late in November.
V.
I had a very particular engagement to breakfast in the Temple. It
was a bitter north-easterly morning, and the sleet and slush lay
inches deep in the streets. I could get no conveyance, and was
soon wet to the knees; but I should have been true to that
appointment, though I had to wade to it up to my neck in the same
impediments.
The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple. They were
at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river. The
name, MR. ALFRED BECKWITH, was painted on the outer door. On the
door opposite, on the same landing, the name MR. JULIUS SLINKTON.
The doors of both sets of chambers stood open, so that anything
said aloud in one set could be heard in the other.
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